Wind-Wise and Solar-Smart

Khanti Munro has great friends: they actually network for him. I met some of them when Clean Air-Cool Planet took part in the Ben & Jerry’s One World-One Heart Festival in Warren, Vermont, in late June. Shivering and dripping wet from the pouring, 40-degree rain (only in Vermont is this type of weather considered suitable for outdoor festivals), they came to sign up for our newsletter, pick up some Save Our Syrup stickers, and find out about Clean Air-Cool Planet.

“Dude. You totally should talk to Khanti. He’s into wind stuff like it’s his job.”
Dude. Okay. I was assuming Khanti was a professor, an advisor, or perhaps the lead sax player for their favorite local band. Wind stuff? It all became clear to me when his friends explained that Khanti and his brother, Noah, were refurbishing and installing an old wind turbine at Green Mountain College (GMC) in Poultney, Vermont.

Khanti and Noah Munro with the blades of their 2-kilowatt wind turbine. Photo courtesy of Green Mountain College.

Green Mountain College hails itself as “Vermont’s environmental liberal arts college.” Photo courtesy of Green Mountain College.

With the determination of the Munro brothers, the GMC wind turbine project unfolded as an independent study on wind power and its potential as an alternative energy source. Through a family friend at the Beverly, Mass.-based environmental nonprofit Solar Now, Khanti and Noah received several donated 20-year-old Quirk Light wind turbines originally manufactured in Australia. One of these they plan to install on the ski slope on the backside of campus, just above an organic garden. The 2-kilowatt turbine will perch atop a 40-foot tower and provide supplemental power to a campus greenhouse. It will also provide an intriguing stop along the up-and-coming Poultney Educational Trail, a town-wide trail system connecting Poultney's educational institutions to outdoor classrooms.

“While we understand that we won’t come close to offsetting the power the college consumes with our small turbine,” says Khanti, “our goal from the very beginning has been to establish a solid educational tool that will open up the eyes of a younger generation to alternative and clean energies.”

Although the turbines have never been used, they are obsolete by two decades. Khanti plans to use parts from the other four turbines to repair the installed one when (or if) it breaks down. While at first the Munros’ project may seem futile within the larger effort to diminish our country’s dependence on fossil fuels, projects like the Munros’ can build collective and influential support for wind energy among American communities.

“When such an incredible opportunity falls into your lap,” says Noah Munro, “it’s nearly impossible not to run with it as far as you can go. And if we can do it, so can other young people. Change will happen!” The siblings’ positive attitude and determination have raised them nearly $7,000 in support for the project already.

But how did five 20-year old Aussie wind turbines end up in the hands of an American college student? Enter Munro family friend Carmel Valianti-Smith, Education Director for Solar Now, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting education about renewable energy and the environment in Beverly, Massachusetts. Beverly High School was fortuitously selected as one of the test sites for President Jimmy Carter’s Photovoltaic Demonstration Project in 1980, which was intended to help American businesses and the general public explore the potential for renewable energy such as wind, solar, and hydropower. But with a lack of funding and interest in renewables throughout the 1980s, the demonstration sites began to fall into disrepair and the Beverly site was virtually forgotten by area residents.

Beverly High School’s Sunroom now provides office space for Solar Now, where Ms. Valianti-Smith rejuvenated the photovoltaic array to use as a teaching tool in her classroom.

The Solar Now facility in Beverly, Massachusetts. Photo courtesy of Carmel Valianti-Smith.

Because the array provides ready electricity to Beverly’s grid, the Solar Now panels provide approximately $20,000 in energy revenue from Massachusetts Electric to the city of Beverly each year. In 1994, an Act of Congress helped to establish Solar Now as a working nonprofit—with the help of Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, and then Congressman Peter Torkildsen. This allowed Valianti-Smith to upgrade the site to a field study center for a variety of renewable energy projects. Today the organization offers teacher workshops, college intern programs, conferences, field trips, curriculum resource information, and a wealth of innovative ideas like the turbine project developing at Green Mountain College.

Solar Now offers students a host of
renewable energy projects to explore,
including this demonstration 10-kilowatt
wind turbine.
Photo courtesy of Carmel Valianti-Smith.

Valianti-Smith received the turbines she donated to the Munro brothers from a teacher in Rhode Island who was unable to install them himself. An outstanding educational and environmental project was born and has taken flight, thanks to the Munro brothers’ motivation to explore the power of wind. In Beverly, Valianti-Smith’s photovoltaic array has recently been upgraded with state-of-the-art solar panels and a 10-kilowatt wind turbine stands nearby, providing an additional $2,000-worth of savings every year to the city of Beverly.

“Solar Now hopes to place 10 kilowatt turbines at schools all across the United States,” says Valianti-Smith. “We hope that Khanti and Noah’s example can lead the way for future leaders to generate successful solutions to escalating pollution and a warming planet.”

“What we thought was going to be just an independent study on wind in the Northeast turned out to be a crash course in not only wind power, but also small town politics, advocacy, bureaucracy, land use planning, permitting, networking, fundraising, and so much more,” Khanti muses.

This is a project that will keep teaching, as the wind keeps blowing.

--Katurah Mackay